A Weekend in Small Town America

A wooded hill on our left, a glistening Mississippi River on our right, and the road stretches out before us.

I am in the car with Alicia, a friend from way back, come to visit her in Minnesota. We’re in Wisconsin at the moment, though, and on our way to the family cabin where her mother lives on 200 acres of woods and apples and crops of soybeans.

The day of our trip south, US President Obama is at the Target Center to talk about his plan for health care reform. It’s a big issue in the States right now and NPR radio broadcasts the speech.

Sleepy towns drift by as Obama tells the crowd about Americans who have trouble with health care coverage –coverage that is cancelled, too expensive, or simply not enough to keep up with medical need.

We’re headed up a gravel road, now, named after Alicia’s family and the grandfather who bought this property to get away from his life in the city. I can see why he did: the land is a sunlit picture, beautiful and silent. Our car finally stops, as does the radio.

Built with full electricity and plumbing, the cabin is the one modern thing in the wild. It has settled in amongst the trees, looking across at green mountains, and stops at the edge of an embankment that continues on down to be swallowed up by animal noises.

Alicia’s husband and her mother come out to greet us. Hand shakes and smiles all round, and I get the tour of the place. Later, there’s drinking beers, grilling burgers and chatting around the fire pit. We hear the occasional chestnut clatter and skip through the trees to remind us that we’re outside and tell Willie the dog that, no, the nachos aren’t for her.

We stay there until the fire is no longer warm enough, then play cards inside until it’s time to go to bed. This first full day away from home has helped me along to full relaxation.

Next morning, the health care issue reappears on TV. Four suits argue about government costs and who’s doing what to whom and, during commercial breaks, attack ads take up the fight. President Obama’s health care plan will raise taxes and explode the deficit, says a silky smooth voice.

We turn off the television and head outside for a Sunday meal. Scrambled eggs, bacon and toast crowd our plates and conversation comes around to squirrels and their need to raid the deck. They keep getting at the bird feeders, which is very troublesome and leads to much discussion about just how to foil the buggers.

After breakfast, we head out on a rambling tour of the property. Alicia and I jump into a golf cart; Sean and Willie the dog, tail beating at miles per second, leap onto a six-wheel ATV and gun the engine. I can see why the dog is excited.

The crops of soybeans are impressive. I never thought they could be but there they are, growing, existing, doing nothing special, but looking impressive nonetheless. They stretch on to the end of my eyesight, yellow as the sun in the full light of day. We bump along the uneven track, circle home and head into town.

Stockholm, Wisconsin (population 97) is a quiet artists’ community. Among other small businesses, it has a café and a little pub, a small insurance company and two art galleries, one of which houses the post office.

I notice the slow pace to everything here. Alicia’s mum chats idly with store owners about the weather, upcoming social events and, because this is the US, church. The weekenders sail along Lake Peppin, really just a wider stretch of the Mississippi, in the warm September weather. There isn’t much more to do, nor would anyone want there to be.

This impression of small town American life is not a façade; the people are far more relaxed that their urban counterparts. They do have their concerns, however, which struck me while I wandered through Stockholm’s pottery store. The woman behind the counter, having discovered that I’m Canadian, asks me a question.

“You wanna trade health care systems?"

Couched in Success

I found a couch the other day. My new apartment had seemed kind of bare without one, but being back at work I hadn’t had the time to fill the space. So I was glad when my neighbourhood stepped in to solve the problem.

Fernwood is a community of murals on walls, of posters searching for lost pets and unwanted furniture left on the sidewalk. Walking home from the pub one evening, I found a couch being moved onto the grass outside a house. It was worn but okay, small but comfortable and not possessed of a cat pee smell.

“Is that a couch?”

“Dude, yeah. Do you want it?”

“Dude, yeah.” We had a deal.

This all seemed so far from Asia. Furnishing an apartment?! Going to work and wearing a tie?! What happened?

I’ll tell you.

My flight from Hong Kong arrived at the end of March in rain that spat out of a midnight sky; a familiar chill burned my ears. Welcome to Victoria the Puddle, I thought.

Apart from narcolepsy and oddly-houred food cravings in the first two weeks, life had been waiting for me. I got right back into hanging out with my friends, frequenting all my favourite restaurants, coffee shops and bars.

I found a new apartment a month later, then returned to work.

As these things happened, the bits and pieces from my trip faded to memory. Places I’d been turned to pictures; all but the most important people I’d met on the road drifted out of existence.

The pace of change frightened me: a backpacker and travel writer in March; a civil servant in June. Would I lose touch with the traveller?

Nope. I have an incurable need to see the world, even have a plan to keep travelling. I’m also not the same guy who left the job he’d been in for 4 years. Witnessing poverty has a way of making one grateful for what he’s got.

So I’m back and having fun – working, but having fun! I can be both travel writer and civil servant, and you'll hear from me again.

Through New Eyes

Dad stumbles again. He's busy looking at China for the first time and not watching where his feet are going.

My parents arrive in Hong Kong, the first stop of a trip to visit their youngest son on the mainland. The first stop ever in Asia; they will see a different world. My plan to loiter here and visit friends coincides with their vacation and Justin decides to join us from Guangzhou for a day, so we have a mini-family gathering across the world from Canada.

Except that this isn't an ordinary family gathering. At home, parents are the venerable and wise hosts, to be respected. They invite us to their house and have us around their dinner table. Here, Justin and I are the ones with experience and the roles are reversed (except for the food. Mum and dad pay for dinner on their first night in town).

I notice the difference between us right away. I get off the escalators and start walking, part the crowd. The parents move at a snail's pace, turn their heads upwards, get stuck behind the masses.

"I'll always remember this street as my first glimpse of Asia," says my dad. The street is Lockhart Road in Causeway Bay, all lit up with signs and storefronts and crowded with vendors, an anywhere street in urban Asia.

Later, he stops my mum on the Mid-Level Escalators and says, "Look at those roof-tops." He points to the overlapping, haphazard, seemingly temporary shelters erected over the noodle stalls below us - a standard sight throughout the continent.

We take a bus to Stanley on the south side of the island and dad complains about the air conditioning.

"It's freezing!"

"Of course," I reply. "It's Asia." Bus drivers here take a perverse pleasure in blasting cold air onto the heads of their passengers. I've just learned to ignore it.

"Oh don't be so...!" and he smacks my arm. He doesn't appreciate my dismissive tone, which has been common for me in the past few days. Five months in Asia and I don't think about how culture and business and infrastructure are different from North America. I have just gotten used to how things work.

But my parents' insistence on being new gets me thinking. I shouldn't be dismissive. I shouldn't be jaded. I should walk off the escalator with my head up, looking.

So I stroll the streets, not with wonder - I've been here too long for that - but with an appreciation for what's there. From the southern hills, I see the majesty of the lights in a nighttime city. I see the sweat of a man holding a loaded-down push cart from rolling down the hill, one slip from certain disaster. I see the hysteria of a food stall.

I see marvellous Hong Kong, and all I need to do is look through the new eyes that my parents brought with them.

A Dose of the Familiar at the End of Asia

This blog has not been updated for three weeks. The reason: I traded in my backpacker label for the more relaxed one of house guest. I've been enjoying myself.

My transformation from rugged adventurer to sedentary lump resulted from increased sentimentality for Canada. February and the beginning of March saw bits of home sneak up on me, grab me by the throat and not let go. A memory popped up, other travellers had their tireless what-will-you-do-when-you-get-home conversations, or a piece of Canadiana would be adapted for local use and I would be temporarily obsessed.

An excellent example: my reaction to the presence of gravy at a Singapore food stall. The young woman behind the counter poured it all over a basket of fries and cheese and I got excited.

ohmygodOhMyGodOHMYGOD!, I thought. "Is that poutine?" I asked. She nodded.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! "How much is it?"

"$4.90 [about $4 Canadian]."

"Well, I've just bought these fries from another stall - crap! Stupid damn sweet potatoes! - but I'll be back tomorrow."

And I was back. I planned the entire next day in Singapore around buying an order of fries, cheese and gravy. I paid my money and ate the first poutine I'd had since last September. Months and months of rice and noodles and I didn't know that the stuff was missing from my life until it showed up at a food stall: a basket of grease; the promise of home.

Incidents like this one told me that I had to change my method of travel for the last month of my trip. Changing countries, changing currencies, changing languages: I needed something different than constant change. I couldn't travel alone, either; the solo routine wouldn't work anymore. I needed a dose of the familiar and an escape from my backpack.

That escape came from acquaintances in the region.

I first visited a friend in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, where he had taught English for more than a year. The high speed train from Taipei, modelled on Japan's bullet train, took me south at a top speed of 300 kilometers per hour and, in the darkness of an evening arrival, only chunks of blurry neon told me where people lived.

Chris picked me up from the local metro station on his scooter - the two of us doubling on that little bike was reason for locals to comment and look again. Five minutes from the station, Chris opened the door and I found a home and a dog and a place to stay for a while.

I played tug-of-war with Toby, the white lab. He pulled and yanked and jerked the chew toy and galumphed to the corner where I threw it. He climbed onto the couch and stood over me to show that I wasn't winning, not really. He played in a way that the feral dogs of Asia never could.

I went out on the town with Chris and his Czech roommate and his roommate's friends. They lived in town and went to the local bars. They knew how to avoid tourist trap restaurants. They showed me how local ex-pats and Taiwanese lived.

Chris and I watched television shows and movies. North American humour got me laughing and the bright lights of Hollywood made sense to me.

I lived more like a real person here, not like someone who stayed for a while then moved on to see the next thing. I dropped my backpack in the back room and forgot about it.

This life didn't end with Taiwan; my next flight took me back to Hong Kong, where this whole thing had begun.

My best friend, Dennis, seemed determined to reintroduce me to the life of a working, settled person and, that first Saturday in town, he took me out to party with his co-workers on their weekend at the bars of Lan Kwai Fong and Wan Chai. We hit Balalaika with its bust of Lenin, its freezer room full of vodka and its fur coats; an Italian restaurant where Ravi, the bar manager, served me a waterfall shot, which nearly singed what remains of my hair; and Agave where we had margaritas better than I've had.

We talked about issues that matter to working people: politics, jobs, families. We avoided the standard, machine gun traveller questions of where-you-from, where-you-been, where-you-going. Well... I didn't avoid them but my point is that I got to talk about those other topics too. I didn't have to limit my conversation to one-word answers and lists. "Canada." "I've been to Mainland China, Vietnam, Cambodia." "I'm going to the rest of Thailand, Laos, Malaysia and Singapore." I was grateful to spend time with these civil servants.

As I chatted and laughed, I began to realize that the benefits of living a stable life in Taiwan and now in Hong Kong ran deeper than simple novelty. I would go back home in a handful of days to be faced with North American culture and more white people than I ever remembered being in one place. I would be faced with serious culture shock.

"It was harder for me going back to Canada," said Dennis of his own trip through South East Asia a few years ago. "Give yourself extra time to adjust."

Perhaps, though, spending time outside the transient world of a backpacker would save me the difficulty. Someone last night referred to Hong Kong as "a good departure point" at the end of Asia. This town is a hybrid of west and east. The crowds and open-air markets and Chairman Mao knick knacks remind me that I'm in Asia, but the caucasians in business suits and the almost limitless North American and European cuisine also give me a taste of home.

To start, Taiwan and Hong Kong were only meant to indulge a fancy for friends and the familiar. To end, they might have become essential to move me from the road to home.

A Real Fine City

Air conditioning hits me full in the face as I enter a souvenir shop across from St. Andrew's Cathedral. I find the flag I'm looking for , but there's also a coffee mug that catches my attention. It reads "Singapore is a Real FINE Place."

The mug is blue and carries a list, pictures circled and crossed out in red, of the various offences in the city and their associated fines. No Spitting, $500; No Chewing Gum, $500, No Urinating in Lift, $500. Though there are more, these examples get to the heart of Singapore: it's a place that likes rules and order. One piece of tourist kitsch has summed up an entire municipal attitude.

At least they can laugh about it, I think to myself.

I leave the shop and get to thinking about what I'll find on my day's walk. My route goes through Chinatown, a place the world over that evokes very specific sights and sounds and smells. The clatter of humanity. The grunge of not enough time in the day. The stink of deregulation.

Will all of those things be there in a city where littering is punishable by a $500 fine? I catch the metro to get my answer.

Outside of Outram Park station, I turn onto Eu Tong Sen Street and know I'm in Chinatown. A big red arch with Chinese characters rests over the passing cars - that's about it. Otherwise, I am on a street like any other in Singapore. There are multiple lanes of traffic, office buildings and department store, coffee shops.

I find my way to the incongruously named Smith Street and think, this is better! Shops are crammed together and filled to overflowing. Red lanterns string their way overhead from one side of the traffic to the other.

Something, however, is still not quite Chinatown about this Chinatown. A monolithic office building stares across at the Chinese merchants; Oriental Plaza is just around the corner, full of niche clothing stores. I have yet to smell anything that requires me to re-straighten my nose hairs.

I duck into one of the shops, hoping. Lots of places in any other Chinatown - Hong Kong's, for instance - will have dried birds nests and snakes on sale, among other things. Not here. Vitamin C and Calcium are on offer in sterile glass cases. The place is brightly lit. Dinge is nowhere.

I keep walking. My feet take me to the pedestrian haunts of Trengganu and Pagoda Streets. The path between the stalls allows four or five people to pass and not once do I have to say, "excuse me" or use my elbows to get anywhere. Tables and chairs at restaurants do not have that ragged, abused look; they're all new and shiny. There are still no stinks to report.

I buy a pair of chopsticks and three silk ties just to say I got them in Singapore's Chinatown, then walk a few blocks and have a coffee in another crisp shopping mall. It's called China Square Central. The cappuccino is very good and I sip slowly, then catch the metro back up-town.

That night, I read about the area of town where I'm staying. Bugis Village, on Rochor Road near Victoria and New Bridge Streets, used to be full of "rowdy sailors... transvestites and prostitutes", which ran contrary to the country's image. The current version opened in 1991 and, along with the Bugis Junction Shopping Centre, provides a cleaner alternative, glistening and exact.

My next day takes me to Little India. At the shopping arcade, the first shop I see is 7-11. Despite the encouraging fog of incense from somewhere in the back, the floors are covered in bright linoleum and the walls give shops here a contained look. It is more of the same, a striking uniformity.

Thinking over everything later, I realize that citizens have had to adjust their way of living to meet a common expectation in Singapore. Business attire and casual street clothes walk the streets far more than head scarves and fezzes and saris. Shopping malls satisfy the public need to purchase and push little knick-knack corner stores to the sidelines. Singaporeans live in a world of polished commercial pursuit and urban cleanliness.

People here have conformed to the rules. The city - and its expectations - defines them; they do not define the city.

I'm not complaining. Services and amenities that meet Western standards are wonderful. Clean streets are great. I just wish they didn't come at the cost of being able to buy a bird's nest in Chinatown.

The Jungle Train to Jerantut

Every now and then, it's important for a traveller to remind himself that he's in a foreign country.

This is more necessary than may be outwardly apparent; a trip abroad can very easily become one big opportunity to socialize with the western world. Travellers, particularly those who carry a backpack, go to see all the same sights and stay in the same places. English is the chosen lingua franca and one rarely has to step outside of it to be understood.

Locals, too, stay in the background. They bring a plate of food, accept a thank you in their words and mumble a return you're welcome, turn and walk away. They sit in the front, drive the bus and rarely do more than point or gesture in answer to a question.

They're also terminally self-effacing about language: their English is always "bad" or "not very good". Mostly, locals in South East Asia don't talk to foreigners.

And why should they? There's often a large group of us and we have a good grasp of English. We're intimidating.

So meeting locals, or at least seeing what they see, is a challenge and an opportunity not to pass up on.

My opportunity came from the Jungle Train. I saw that its track ran from the border with Thailand to the south where it joined the coastal line that carried on to Singapore. For most of the day, the train would rattle through the jungle and villages at the western edge of Taman Negara (literally "national park" in Malay).

My guidebook also explained that, for residents of the area, "the railway is the only alternative to walking." Perfect!, I thought and booked my ticket to Jerantut, a gateway to Taman Negara.

The train carriage was a grubby, rundown affair. Fabric on the seats was faded and dusty; a spring poked out of place and told me not to sit there - I didn't. Food trays from the seat backs and sometimes the toggles that held them in place were missing, though I could see where they'd been. Windows, dirtier than they had any right to be, were permanently opened inwards at a forty-five degree angle from the bottom of the frame.

But I didn't care. Malaysians in fezzes and head scarves crowded aboard and made themselves at home. Leaving from the Wakaf Bharu station at 6:33am, I could sleep knowing that my day would be full of the sights that locals see.

When the sun lifted its head about an hour later, a landscape appeared that was worth the price of admission - roughly $3.50 Canadian. Palm fronds and tree leaves swept at the sides of the train. Now a gap in the foliage and a field full of fog, quick as a flash bulb or a photographer's trigger finger: there suddenly and gone. Then a river, glistening and curled.

There was village life in between jungle scenes. At stations like Marek Urai, Bukit Abu and Dabong, men sat, elbows on knees, working the end off a toothpick with their teeth, and watched. Women watched, too, though only a little, and chatted or kept an eye on stray and possibly delinquent children.

Not many people got on the train. They often stayed in their seats as we pulled into the stations and out again, which suggested that they waited to meet people from this train or that one, or to get on a train going in the other direction. Or maybe, and very delightfully, it suggested that the Jungle Train's arrival was a major event in the village day.

Or perhaps the station was just a convenient place to sit and worry at a toothpick.

Families were in the seats as well as out the windows. The children were generally good, though one little boy discovered that I spoke English and decided that I was entertainment.

He thumped up to me, shouted "Hello!", smiled with his gawky and uneven teeth, and thumped off down the aisle.

"Hello," I said and waved, but he was already gone.

Thump, thump, thump, and he was back. "Hello!" Thump, thump, thump.

"Hello." I didn't wave this time.

Thump, thump, thump. "Hello!" Thump, thump, thump.

And so on.

Looking up after the last time he came past me, the boy's mother was talking to him. I smiled, remembering when I was a kid.

She was probably saying, Calm down! And leave that man alone. You're bothering him.

He chattered back, breathless and excited. But mum, he speaks English! And why do I have to leave him alone? He likes me! (He shot me a grin after this last part.)

Mum got her way in the end and he stayed at the front of the carriage.

Thinking about the scene later, I realized that it was like hundreds of versions of the same conversation I'd had with my own mum. The why-do-I-have-to-stop-doing-that conversation. I never found my mum's point of view that pursuasive, always asked why, and never got a satisfactory answer. I had to stop what I was doing, though.

It was funny because I'd come to South East Asia, taken this train, in search of the local experience and found more of the things that were familiar to me. That kid, having that conversation with his mum.

Sure the train rattles through the jungle, which doesn't happen anywhere else in the world that I know of. But looking under the skin of the local experience in foreign countries, peeling it back, people are more similar from place to place to place than perhaps is evident at first glance.

We all have the same conversations, though we have them in different languages.

Articles of Faith

Under a sweltering sun, I learn about faith.

The Batu Caves are home to Kuala Lumpur's (KL) celebration of Thaipusam, a three-day Hindu festival in honour of Lord Muruga. It occurs in January or February each year and I am there for this year's event.

I arrive on the last day, a Sunday, and the festivities are in full swing. Though the caves, in the distance and up a long flight of stairs, are where devotees make offerings to their lord, people also bear their burdens along the street below.

They are burdens to be certain. This is a festival of doing penance, of washing away sins, of being blessed. The burdens are the penance.

Some Hindus support kavadis, large platforms built with a metal framework that is attached to head, shoulders and waist. They are ornately decorated with different colours, feathers and religious figures. They bob in the heat, lifting then falling into themselves.

Other Hindus are pierced. To say that they are pierced doesn't exactly hit the point if only because the piercing, in most cases, occurs in an all-over-body sort of way. It's not permanent, either. People don't walk around the everyday streets looking as they do; I have the distinct impression that their adornments have been done very recently and will be removed at the end, which makes the effort even more impression.

Many of the pierced have hooks running through the skin of their backs, up and down in rows. Some hooks hold apples; others are attached to ropes held by other Hindus who hold back their charges when they strains too much. The skin pulls and stretches.

The piercings also include metal rods, spears and tridents running through cheeks and horizontally through the upper lip. There is no blood. All the pierced Hindus have the dazed and holy look of the penitent, but there is no blood.

Those who don't carry burdens of penance, carry burdens of a beat. Thaipusam is a celebration and drummers make music so the devoted can dance. To the crack and thunder of a drum, they dance. They dance and they dance and they dance.

One woman twirls and stumbles in the middle of a circle of people. She sticks out her tongue, eyes wide and wild and seemingly senseless to the world around her. She stops, takes a breath and keeps going. The sun beats down.

Away from the crowd - I am wilting in the heat - a Hindu man asks me what I think of all this. He is the one who explains about penance and washing away sins.

"For me, coming from the West, I have no context for this," I say. "It's madness."

The west coast of Canada is not an overtly religious place. There are probably pockets of faith to be seen, spaces for belief. But they're not very obvious and one would have to go looking. Largely, these places stay out of the light and the public spaces.

But in KL, articles of the people's faith are there to be seen: on heads, in backs and cheeks. Faith, here, is not Paul Simon's "island in the setting sun."

Faith, here, is to be celebrated and worn on the body, a badge of belief with no blood.

Snow Wash?

On the road, one expects to see things that require explanation. One hopes for foreignness. Curiosity and a need to know about other places are the reasons to leave home in the first place.

So it was with mounting interest that I saw a word I never expected to see in South East Asia: snow. There, repeatedly on signs leading to the east coast town ofKota Bharu, were the words "snow wash".

SNOW WASH. Snow Wash! SNOW WASH.

In different letters, different colours and different sizes, here were words I could not explain, advertising who-knows-what that I couldn't explain, either. And as Theroux wrote in his latest book, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, travel writing is about jumping to conclusions.

So, my conclusions...

A man ordered a snow wash, just because he was curious. Out came men dressed as elves and treated him to one. Those nasty little midgets took the man out at the knees and dragged him to a snow bank, which was carefully preserved in the back. They tossed him in, pulled him through and left him standing on the other side, shivering and miserable. He was no longer curious.

A man ordered a snow wash, just because he was curious. Out came five lovely Malaysian girls, dressed in robes of white and iced blue, to dance a ceremonial snow fall, or what they imagined one to be. They twirled and swayed and drifted around the man. He left thoroughly enchanted and ready to move his entire life to Malaysia.

A man ordered a snow wash, just because he was curious. A Malaysian stepped from out of nowhere and pasted him in the back of the head with a snowball. The man had snow trickling beneath his shirt collar. He was no longer curious.

Sadly, the facts were a lot less exciting than my conclusions dictated.

I fell into conversation with Kisham, a restaurant owner in Kota Bharu. His English was rather good so I asked the question.

"I gotta know. What's a snow wash?"

"It's a car wash," he laughed. "They have a big tube [Kisham here braces his hands as if holding the tube] that shoots soapy foam. It looks like snow."

Oh. All of my imagined explanations - the elves, the lovely girls, the snowball - and I end up with "it's a car wash."

Travellers like to feel that they're experiencing something new, seeing something that nobody ever would at home. They like to feel they're having an adventure and living to tell about it. The explanation of snow wash was something of a disappointment, entirely lacking any sense of drama.

That said, I satisfied my curiosity and learned something new: Malaysians describe foamy soap as snow.

Little Pieces

Kuala Lumpur (KL) challenges for the top of my Favourite Cities list.

Edinburgh, for sentimental reasons, is at the top. I lived there and remember its beauty and easy accessibility. I remember the grease that passed for food in the chippy stalls and the rough exterior of the people who ordered pints of beer from me. I remember my flat on Cornwall Street, whose kitchen window looked onto the stage door of the Royal Lyceum Theatre. Edinburgh was my first home abroad.

Barcelona, another favourite, was my best taste of Spain. Though in the minority for the first time and working hard to communicate, I had enough attention left to notice the variety of things to do. The plazas and cafes and people could keep a traveller occupied for weeks. Las Ramblas alone was worth days for its markets and hawkers and tourists.

The cities that impress me, then, provide a lot of different ways to keep busy: little pieces of people-watching and sight-seeing and good food all in one place. KL is certainly up to this requirement.

On my first day, the melting pot makes itself apparent. A man of Malay descent sweats over chicken satay and his grill pushes smoke onto the street theatrically so that passers-by seem to emerge from a thick fog despite the clear sky. Indian faces appear for the first time this trip, hawking shoes and watches and carpets and selling tandoori and masala and finger-scorching nan.

Sitting over noodles in Chinatown, I ask a question of the staff. "Do the Chinese people here speak Cantonese or Mandarin?"

A mute old man, whose small face is sunk inside puffy cheeks, answers with his pen. 95% Cantonese in KL, his note reads.

I sit back and consider and watch the different faces that walk by my table.

The next day, I walk to the gardens in the west of town. They offer flowers, serene little ponds and, from the hill, nice views over the city. There isn't the clatter of streets and markets, which are just a couple of kilometres away; only a park bench and my book.

My path to get there goes past the open and stately Merdeka Square, its fountain. I look up near the National Mosque and see skyscrapers super-imposed without controversy on the antiquated towers of the train station. It's a pleasant mix of old and new.

My last day sees a trip to KLCC. Here, servers in crisp uniforms navigate through tables of white linen and polished cutlery; the restaurants have clever names written in ornate letters. In the Petronas Towers mall, designer labels like Versace, Luis Vuitton and Calvin Klein keep cash entrenched in my pocket. I find a pond and a patch of shade behind the building and relax with everyone else.

This isn't an area for me to spend a lot of time, I reflect, but it's interesting nonetheless. From the centre of the mall, one can see, all at one, the six or seven levels of store names and commercial enterprise. The walls and walls of polished displays, the cash changing hands. Everything is available right here and people will pay for the convenience.

The Petronas Towers, their glitz and sheen, and KLCC are a long way from the rest of town. They do, however, add to the ambience of KL. They are a piece of the larger whole.

All of these places - KLCC, Chinatown, Little India, the gardens and Merdeka Square - are little pieces of occupation that entertain in their different ways and make KL a city of endless interest.

I'll be back in a few weeks to see what else I can find.

The Waiting Game (with Peanuts)

Peanuts are a good food for waiting.

Trapped in their cases, they are difficult to extract. I attack them with thick, lumbering fingers and a piece of shell comes off. Not enough, alas, to allow the insides to come free. I apply pressure once again and lose half the contents on the floor.

Crunching away on what's left, I have a go and the next one. There's a lot of focus in getting enough to eat from a bag of peanuts. Head bent, neck cramped, fingers worrying away at the little details, it's a couple of hours on the clock before the bag is finished. Time has wandered away.

I mention this because, of late, I have been doing a lot of waiting. A period of blankness has hit my travel: no sights to write about; no cultural events to observe. Just the waiting.

Everything started with a transition between countries. I travelled from Laos to Thailand in the space of three days, from Si Phan Don to Pakxe, from Pakxe to Ubon Ratchathani (Ubon) and from there overnight to Bangkok.

Great masses of time existed without anything to fill them.

The idleness really hit home in Ubon. Having eaten at the station, what was there to do in the five hours before my train departed? I did what any bored traveller would: grooved to the tunes in my head.

In a sweat-stained white dress shirt, hat perched - barely - on my head at a crooked angle, my head started to bob to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Sooner or later, I don't know when, my arms got into the act and I was rocking out on a train platform.

The dog that had been begging at my feet cocked its head sideways and took a step back. Two little girls - watching, gaping - stepped behind their mother. Who is this guy?

I ran out of songs and started people watching. A little boy had decided to pop the cap off a plastic bottle using only his feet. His first stomp sent a flip-flop flying. Retrieving it, he tried again. Success! The cap came off with a staisfying pop and he looked up, wide-eyed. Did I do that?!

When the people got boring, I wandered off and bought some peanuts. They were a revelation! The train started and with hours before sleep I spent my time emptying the bag: fumbling, cracking, tossing upwards, cursing, cracking again, looking on the floor, eating the rest.

Then the peanuts were gone and I could read my book for a while before curling up under my Thai Railways blanket.

With arrival in Bangkok, I sprang into relative action. A tuk-tuk took me into the centre of town and a guest house. From here, I booked onward travel to Malaysia and started another waiting game.

Waiting defines cultural experiences on the road. The trip to get from place to place, the hauling bags, the hanging around gives the people and places and sights their importance. They wouldn't be nearly so exciting without the work to get there, without the waiting. It's only a matter of filling the time, which is helped, ably, by peanuts.

Travel is nothing without its mundanities.

Polite People, Encroaching Tourism

Laos is a relatively untouristed country. The Rough Guide to Southeast Asia says that the People's Democratic Republic only opened up to foreigners in the 1990s and that many areas of the country are not much different to what they were when the French first arrived.

Indeed, the smaller towns and villages still live a very pared-down existence. Both Don Det and the village of Pakbeng get electricity from generators, which shut down at 10 or 11pm. Outside of Luang Prabang and Vientiane, most dwellings have a roof of corrugated tin or bamboo thatch. Most of the population still lives in the countryside.

Compared to the rest of Southeast Asia, tourists' needs are not accounted for and visitors have to adjust their expectations to the lifestyle around them, like water running around rock formations or islands in a stream.

One can see that Laos is new to having visitors, too, in the guilelessness of its people. They say sabaidee without prompting and never deny a visitor the chance to talk. Particularly in the villages, locals will nod and wave their greetings.

Even the language is friendly: the words for hello and I'm fine are the same. The result, during introductions, is polite, if repetitive conversation.

"Sabaidee," I say to a girl out front of her restaurant.

"Sabaidee."

"Sabaidee baw?" I ask.

"Sabaidee. Sabaidee baw?"

"Sabaidee!"

We grin and nod our heads vigorously, knowing that this is as far as the conversation goes. I sit down at a table and order food, pointing at what I want.

But even when the conversation stops, the courtesy doesn't. While I'm waiting for the night bus out of Vientiane, the guest house staff is having their evening meal. They invite me over and I politely decline. They insist and insist and insist and I drag a chair over.

The meal is do-it-yourself spring rolls. Plates of grilled fish, peanuts, rice noodles and fresh herbs crowd the table. Spicy hoisin sauce sits off to the side. Lettuce and cabbage leaves are there for wrapping.

We dig in. The Laotians laugh and say who-knows-what and laugh some more. They make sure I get enough, pile my leaves with fish. They ask if I like the food. Yes very good, I say.

I do my best to fulfill the requirements of their invitation: eat enough to be polite but not too much. My ride to the bus comes by and I am able to make my excuses without giving offence.

Even though this is likely the only food they'll have all evening, these people have no problem sharing with a stranger. It's the polite thing to do when the stranger is sitting off to the side, just waiting for his bus. Of course it is.

But Laotians are starting to deal with strangers in a different way and the signs of a changing attitude are everywhere.

Tuk-tuk drivers work their other jobs, like other Asian countries, though they ask their questions in a hesitant undertone, knowing that they're not supposed to ask them at all. Restaurants in Vang Vieng, an aberration in the country, play American sitcoms all day, everyday. The smaller towns are in the midst of major construction projects, setting up new guest houses and bungalows to meet the increasing demand of tourism.

On Don Det, a girl sees an opportunity when she returns a tourist's laundry.

"32,000 kip please [about $4US]."

"But yesterday, you said 20,000."

"Please mis-ta, my sister has to go to school." The line comes straight from the vendors of Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.

The man shows no sign of backing down. "You said 20 and that's what you'll get." He hands over the money and walks off with his laundry.

The girl stands, open-mouthed and staring for a moment, then begins chattering to her friends and looking in his direction. This is the first and only time that I see conflict between Laotians and their visitors in two and a half weeks.

So tourism is having its effect. Like water running down a river, it wears on its surroundings over time, changing them, etching in new shapes and patterns, molding them to fit the current and flow of the people who come to visit.

Laos is an island in the stream, whose banks are wearing slowly away.

The Pastoral Life

The sleeper bus down from Vientiane got my visit to Si Phan Don, the 4000 Islands, off to a rough start.

"Sleeper bus", for any traveller, is a term that holds ugly associations. The bunks on these buses wage war on arms and legs, on joints and muscles, on sleep. They're very short, you see. I had managed to survive many nights staying in them without serious injury, though others hadn't been so lucky.

"I have a bruise right here that's the size of your face!" said Khas, a 6-foot Australian in Hue, as he pointed to his hip. He limped over to pay his restaurant bill. "We'll take the train to Saigon."

I had high hopes for the trip to southern Laos. The bunks, if not long, were luxuriously wide. Hooray!, I silently exclaimed. Too soon, alas, and my hopes were dashed, nipped in the travelling bud. It seemed the width was to allow for two people's residence.

My bunk mates were an elderly Laotian and his cane. They had the inside half by the window; I, the outside. My legs stretched into the passageway searching for a kind of comfort.

The two next to me got up to use the toilet, right across from us, several times during the night. Without the commonality of a shared language, they resorted to physical gestures. Poke, poke. Oh, sure. Poke, poke. Okay, alright. Poke, poke. Again?!

I now know what it is to sleep with a 70-year old man.

After such an up-and-down, though confining experience, I spent my first full day on Si Phan Don in pursuit of exercise. The southern island of Don Khon was supposed to have a number of waterfalls and dolphins. I walked from my home on Don Det past dried fields and cows picking at trees and a solitary hut here, there. Trucks full of tour-goers charged ahead and covered me with dust.

An hour or so of walking found me at Somphamit Falls - somewhat of a misnomer. They were not so much cliffs that dropped water from a great height, as they were a collection of large rapids. Water crashed through jagged chunks of rock and, without settling for an instant, crashed again. At the very bottom, the falls became a stream that sang along as if nothing dramatic had happened.

I carried on and found where dolphins were supposed to make an appearance. None did, but the Laotian boys who swam and dove off the rocks and played made for a charming scene. Sunlight sparkled on the Mekong. They laughed. I stopped wading, put on my shoes and headed back.

My legs, the next day, complained about their exertions and insisted on spending time hammock-bound. Bread, cheese and fruit settled with me into a day of literary pursuit.

I read The Little Drummer Girl. There was Gavron the Rook in his castle on the hill. There was Kurtz running the thing for everyone to see, but for no one to know about. There was Charlie: sacrifice and willing participant. And Joseph. Oh, poor Joseph.

Flip, flip, flip, and Charlie had saved the world for some. I looked over my bungalow railing to see a farmyard fight in the making. A dog had a piece of bread at its paws; a rooster eyed him up, weighing his chances. The bird decided against certain death and retreated to look for other food. To scratch his claw in the dirt. To brood. Bugger.

These two were part of a larger country life. Two women rumbled a wheelbarrow by, stacked with bamboo. A group of men carried their picks and hoes down the track. Children played in the dirt or splashed each other in the river, and old women lounged in the shade, chewing their betel nut. It was a window on a pastoral world.

That, I suppose, is the point of travel: to see sights, people, ways of life that one wouldn't at home. I live in a city. I work in an office, occasionally wear a tie and take coffee breaks. I don't live in a hut, never use a pick or a hoe and wouldn't know how to fix the lack of running water in a shower - we lacked running water in our shower one morning.

I am not a country boy. Nor, I would imagine, is anyone else in Canada by Laotian standards. So it's interesting to see people who live completely different to me and other Canadians.

The waterfall was cool too.

Vientiane, Meet Paris

The cities of Laos have managed to adopt the culture of their former European master more completely than anywhere else in the region.

Vietnam's north tries and doesn't quite succeed. Hanoi possesses colonial buildings, a propensity for stately sidewalk vegetation and a love of cafes, it's true; but the manic traffic, the wall-to-wall motos take away from the ambiance in the end. The Old Quarter, too, is a place where Asia lives alone, full shops and stalls running themselves in lanes sometimes big enough only for one full-grown person to pass.

And Saigon? Well. Saigon looks more American than anything.

In Cambodia, local culture drowns out French influence. The Silver Pagoda and the Royal Palace take architectural pride of place in Phnom Penh; the downtown markets lend the haphazard feel of Asia, spilling into the streets. Angkor Wat and the other temples near Siem Reap are a reminder that The Khmers Were Here.

Laotian cities, in comparison, embrace a little more of their colonial past. I look for a guesthouse in Vientiane and walk down a street marked Rue Nokeo Koummane, cross another labelled Rue Sasenthai. Trees, spaced evening down the sidewalk, stretch languidly above, giving the impression of a carefully manicured urban jungle, a green canopy for people in the cafes.

Ah, the cafes. In Luang Prabang and Vientiane, many of them go by French names: Croissant d'Or, Le Banneton to name two. In shaded courtyards, they provide little tables that are tidy and meant for two. They serve coffee, not too thick and bitter as in Vietnam or Cambodia, that approximate and surpass the best European blends; the milk, steamed, comes in a precise, miniature metal carafe. Croissants butter and flake on a just-big-enough plate. Proximity with France is as much presentation as it is the food.

Imitation also comes in one of Vientiane's biggest landmarks, the Patouxai. It's the Laotian Arc de Triomphe. Up Rue Lane Xang in the northeast of town, this version is more top-heavy and has thicker pillars than what I remember of the original on the Champs Elysees, but gets the gist of the idea. It also offers a pleasant view of greater Vientiane from the top.

None of this - seats in the shade, meals of just the right size and presentation and mimickry of French architecture - is to say that Laos does not have its own culture. To the contrary: monks, usually in pairs, stroll up and down in their orange robes; Buddhist temples are everywhere; markets, smaller than in other Asian towns, sell their knick-knacks and roasted meat skewers. This is definitely Asia and not Europe.

It is only to say that towns here seem to hold onto pockets of distinctive Frenchness, which has not been adapted in any way for the local culture.

Even the Laotians get into the act. A man outside Kosilo Books addresses me in soft, effeminate French. The bookstore will re-open later, he lisps.

I turn away, smile and think, Welcome to Vientiane, the Little Paris of Laos.

The Slow Boat to Laos

Long-distance travel used to take a long time.

Mongol hordes conducted wars over years, partly because they took weeks to get as far as Russia or China or the Middle East. Marco Polo travelled from Italy to Khublai Khan's court in the space of months. Europeans needed similar amounts of time to arrive in distant lands and administer their little pieces of empire. It was all very time-consuming.

In the modern age, the world is more easily accessible. My friend can get married in Hawaii and I can leave Canada the day before to be in time for the ceremony. I can plan a trip to Asia and expect to arrive in hours, not days or weeks.

The western world, in these days, the, expects instant gratification from travel. It has lost the patience for lengthy trips. It wants to get there now.

So what is it like to take one's time? What is it like to set out for a destination and not arrive in mere hours?

For answers, I took the slow boat from the Thai border to Luang Prabang in Laos, several kilometres down the Mekong River. The trip would take 2 days and roughly 14 hours of sunlight.

The first day saw me and 90 of my closest friends crowd onto a large, flat-bottomed boat. For seats, we had narrow and very upright benches. Good thing I bought a cushion from vendors on the dock, I thought. The lot of us got settled and the boat was underway by 11:30am.

The travel agents who coordinated our trip had offered the last-minute alternative of a bus to Luang Prabang. Either they had over-sold the boat or they were just trying to score an extra few dollars. Or both.

Whatever the case, I refused and was glad I did. The banks of the Mekong showed off vibrant green jungles and lush mountainsides. The shore alternated between craggy grey rocks, some that popped right out of the water, and powder white beaches.

The wind whispered across the tops of our heads. The sun shone, then disappeared as we navigated a kink in the river. We lounged and sometimes slept.

We were, however, also modern travellers and looking at scenery could only entertain for so long. Some people stood and paced. Some broke out cards and started a game. Others retreated within their iPods. I was without any kind of entertainment, having finished my book, American Gods, just before the boat launched. Generally, I sat and looked over the railing.

On the second day, though, after a stop in the village of Pakbeng, Rob sat next to me. He's a lighting technician from Vancouver and has a history of travelling. His parents had taken him all over Europe as a child and he's been to almost forty countries in twenty years of going overseas.

We chatted about travel and found another form of entertainment when that subject finished up.

Two English girls, Kim and Zoe, were sitting in front of us. I pulled the hood up on Zoe's sweater and looked off to my right, suddenly engrossed in the scenery. Zoe turned and looked straight at Rob. He froze, a deer in the headlights.

"It wasn't me - hey, where'd you get those earphones?!" He stared straight at her and hoped she didn't notice the change of subject. A smile pulled at the corner of his mouth.

"That was great! What a distraction!" I doubled up, laughing.

"What?! I'm really interested in her earphones!" But he'd lost it too.

Zoe still stared, never having said a word, now trying to figure the two of us out.

The three of us proceeded to have a conversation about earphones, for my part through laughter and with tears in my eyes, then went back to watching the scenery.

Little kids climbed along the rocks and waved hello - sabai dee! Cows grazed where there was enough grass. Huts rested among the trees. What were they there for? Who lived there? Our boat passed on without any answers.

Rob and I read in the travel guide about caves near Luang Prabang and kept an eye out for them.

"Look, is that a cave?" asked Rob.

"No man, that's a boat."

"Oh. Right." He looked at me out the side of his face.

The caves were important, being very near our destination. We saw them near the end of the afternoon, marked by a number of boats and a staircase cut into the mountain.

An hour later, at 5pm, we docked and heaved our packs up the stairs. Hotel owners greeted us and, choosing one, we took off down the streets of Luang Prabang, finally there after two full days.

Long-distance travel, over days not hours, is no different than short trips but for the need of increased occupation. People who will be passengers for a long time need to focus on keeping themselves busy: with music, with books or with talking to friends.

There's nothing to surviving travel on the slow boat but laughter and a conversation about earphones.

The Taste of Thailand

The taste of Thailand: a splash of coconut milk; a dollop of curry paste; stir-fried chicken; eggplant, lime leaves, asian basil and chilies; fish sauce to taste.

These are the ingredients for a traditional green curry I leaned at A Lot of Thai Home Cooking Class in Chiang Mai.

A girl named Welcome - "My parents were hippies, what d'you want?" she asks - recommends the course. She's been volunteering in Thailand and speaks the language; I figure she has a better idea than most about experiences that get at genuine Thai culture and keep her advice in mind. In Chiang Mai, I get the last space for a Tuesday class.

Our teacher, Siripen Siryabhaya, whom everyone calls Yui, is full of energy and keen to ensure a positive experience for her students. She hands over her recipe book with a smile as I step into her beat up green sedan. It has all the recipes for that day's class and more.

When we arrive at her home, which doubles as a classroom, I see that the woks are already set on their burners, the kitchen utensils and ingredients already placed at the ready. We will spend most of our time with demonstrations and our own cooking, not preparing our workspace.

Demonstrating the safe way to light a gas element, Yui shows herself to be a demanding cook and a joker. "You burn hair, no problem," she says. "You burn garlic, you fail the course." We smile and crowd around for the initial cooking lesson.

First up: phad thai. Tofu, garlic and spring onions fly into the wok and we learn how to tell the difference between too much and not enough oil. Chicken, noodles and egg come next, added separately, combined effortlessly, cooking all the while, and we have the final product.

A ladle of water over dry noodles to stir-fry them and the use tamarind paste in, well, anything are particular revelations for me and I go confidently away, prepared to make my noodles.

I burn the garlic. The element is too hot and stir-frying is a lot quicker than grilling a piece of meat or simmering a stew. My noodles turn out okay, though, and we carry on with the course.

The class proceeds to make spring rolls, green curry, hot and sour soup, stir-fried chicken and cashews, and sticky rice with mango. Yui watches us go through each recipe after her demonstration, giving instructions when necessary.

"You need more oil; see the pan? It's too dry."

"More water here."

"Your element is too hot. You'll burn the garlic."

She even show me how to wrap my spring rolls and helps me re-wrap when I try one on my own. As the day progresses, there are fewer mishaps: not so many burned ingredients; less smoke rising off the woks. The cooks chop faster and learn they can't look away from sizzling food. All the dishes turn out tasty.

We go to the market at the end of the day. Yui shows us all the foods from the recipes and tells us about a whole lot of others. I learn that galangal is a similar idea to ginger and that vendors sell types of rice that sometimes differ only in how long ago they were harvested.

Our guide also takes questions.

"Is oyster sauce here different from the stuff in China?" asks Eugene, from London.

"No, same same... but different," smirks Yui through our guffaws. We just got her to utter the biggest English-language cliche in South East Asia and she knows it.

Oyster sauce, like any other sauce of course, has the same ingredients but a different mix of them depending on the brand or the country.

We continue on, smelling different varieties of basil, asking about morning glory, eyeballing huge tubs of curry paste. We see the different kinds of rice noodles - this kind for soup, that one for phad thai. We learn that some restaurants use citric acid, sold in baggies one would expect to see a goldfish in, rather than lemons or limes for flavour in some dishes.

I have always loved strolling through markets, though never really know what I am seeing. Now I do.

About an hour of learning to shop like a local leads us to the end of our day. We stand around thanking Yui for her trouble. She thinks of the effort as nothing at all.

"I enjoy cooking. I want everyone to enjoy it too."

We have, and all of us now have more cooking skills and a taste of Thai culture to bring home with us. Hopefully, I've learned not to burn the garlic.

Small Town Mountain

I'm a small town boy. Might live in a city now, but I ain't from there. No sir.

My memories started in a community called Blueberry Creek, just off the highway that runs between Castlegar and Trail. Maybe 1000 people lived in the town; we didn't even have a grocery store or, after my grade 1 year, a school of any description. When my family moved, it was to the slightly larger centre of Cranbrook then to the northern metropolis of Prince George, roughly 75,000 people at the time.

I remember the sense of community from those years. There weren't so many restaurants or clubs or bars, so my parents would have friends over for parties, or they would have us, kids and all. We would also go to one of the many lakes, or tobogganing in the winter. People got to know each other. They had to because they lived in the same small town together. They were neighbours.

My fond memories of little communities like those ones is probably the reason I liked the town of Pai, tucked into the folded mountains northwest of Chiang Mai.

I liked the town despite the drive up to it. The road curved and wound, yet we drove in a straight line for most of the time. Our driver laid rubber on hairpin turns, caused pieces of the bus to shake and squeal. People sitting together constantly knocked legs, knees and arms. Hands got sore from holding on.

"Jesus!" That was me. A silver sedan going the other way and passing on the right only just managed to slip back into its own lane before we got there.

Concrete beneath my toes had never felt so nice as it did at the end of that ride.

Equilibrium restored, I found a small town around me. The town centre lacked street lights. A walk one day got me outside the city limits in five minutes and many of the lanes to get from here to there were not big enough for cars to pass. One of the bridges that took visitors out to the surrounding countryside was made of bamboo and thatch, for pedestrians only.

The pace of life was slower too. Maybe the people knew that nothing would happen in any great hurry but would happen all the same. Most shops were mostly empty most of the time. Clerks looked over when I strolled in and wondered if they should get up - they didn't. There were no tuk-tuks, no people shouting to get my attention. They waited for me to come to them and sometimes I did.

The lack of constant activity, though, meant that the town had to have great scenery to keep visitors busy during the day and Pai did. A dirt path took me past fields of farmers working away and a stream burbling next to me. The trees on the hill off to my right were frosted red on top of green. Sunlight crested the ridge and brightened everything. It was something from a Wordsworth poem, that scene.

The intended destination for my walk - a waterfall, going to which involved walking across a small river several times, climbing fences and rocks and mingling with grazing cows - did not happen. My boots did not fancy getting soaked.

Instead, I wandered up to the ancient town of Vieng Nur. It was sleepy little village of one main street and the occasional yappy dog. A town like that one is never about the place itself: there wasn't much to see except little shops and locals sitting in the sun. A town like that one is about the walk past mountains and rivers and forests on the way. After finding a bite to eat, I headed for home through that same scenery.

Back in Pai, I saw that the streets had gotten busier - vendors seemed to save their energies for tourists who had finished their day trips. People strolled up and down the main street and bought shish kabobs, cheap noodles and stickers that said Hippies Smell. Women from local hill tribes, their mouths stained red from betel nut, sold colourful fabric hats and bags. Portable lamps caught smoke wafting into the night and bargains going down.

A smaller town, a slower life, nothing to do but go outside: reminders of childhood are always nice. That said, Pai is a beautiful place no matter who you are or what you remember.

Everything to Do, Nothing to See

The hub of northern Thailand, Chiang Mai is a centre for activity, not a place to look at or to watch.

It's quiet and lacks urban aggression. Locals lounge outside their shops, just waiting. A sprite of a woman floats from the back of her restaurant and notices that I and two English guys, Paul and Scott, have arrived. She brings us menus and floats back. It's a while before we can order.

Later, down a lane dappled by sunlight, a man rolls past on his bicycle at the speed of his afternoon.

The three of us walk to the ends of the old town, see a little of the city outside the walls. Enough to know what the place is about. I realize that I've seen all I want to.

There are the temples, of course. They mark the city like a spoonful of sugar spilled onto a coffee table. But by now I'm templed out.

Temples are South East Asia's response to European castles and churches: one can find them anywhere in the region. Vietnam has temples and ruins and Buddhas scattered up and down the coast. In Cambodia, Phnom Penh boasts the Grand Palace and the Silver Pagoda and, not to be missed, Angkor Wat lies just outside Siem Reap. There's a lot to see.

It is Angkor Wat that finally gets me. Seeing such splendid stonework, and on such a scale, lessens the brightness of all the other lights and I cannot be bothered once I hit Bangkok and its pile of temples.

"It's no good to have the peak in the middle of your trip," says Paul. "You have nothing to look forward to."

So I take my travel guide's advice and look into the activities in and around Chiang Mai. It tells me that there are any number of day trips outside the town and many courses available to give me a taste of Thai culture.

Paul and Scott find a trip out to a national park. Doi Inthanon sports a number of waterfalls, a hilltribe village and "the highest spot in Thailand", 2565 metres up. The tour company will drive us there and back, take us to the various sights and provide lunch. I say yes.

The choice is a good one. Our tour guide lets us see the sights at our own pace, doesn't hold our hand. At the falls, water crashes from a great height, wets the stones under our feet. When we get closer, it mists our clothes and camera lenses. The Karen hilltribe, in their village of basic huts, weaves gorgeous silks and serves locally-produced coffee, dark and smooth.

"The highest spot in Thailand" is the only mild disappointment, providing no view to the bottom, but we get some amusement. The souvenir shop sells bottles of oxygen to combat altittude sickness. Sniggering ensues, which we try to suppress with so many Thais around wearing scarves and mittens and toques.

Over the next couple of nights, I hit Chiang Mai's night bazaar. Blankets, pillow cases, place mats, scarves and shawls: all can be found in the stalls, beautiful examples of Thai craftsmanship. Not normally a shopper, my wallet empties rather quickly then.

The last full day is a cooking class. I learn how to cook traditional dishes like phad thai and green curry. The teacher demonstrates each recipe, warning us not to burn the garlic all the while, and takes us to the market to see the ingredients she uses. I finally see galangal in the flesh and learn that it is similar to ginger.

I head to Pai the next day - Paul and Scott have already departed for Laos - but sit down to breakfast first. As I sip my coffee, a Swiss woman says hello and confirms my suspicions about this city.

"I went for a hilltribe trek and, yesterday, I did a cooking class. Today, I start a 2-day foot massage course," she says.

She has been in Chiang Mai a week already and still isn't bored. Hiking, visiting hiltribes and taking courses - this woman spends her time doing a lot but not seeing much of the city itself.

Over four days here, I have done the same. There is everything to do and nothing to see.

The Madness of Khao San

Khao San Road. Tourist trap. Locals' money maker. People watcher's fix. With constant activity, this little strip of pavement at the centre of Bangkok is a sight to behold.

The first thing I notice on the Road is that sounds bleed into each other. Here's one of the suit sellers, a well-dressed Thai man, hair slicked back, one big smile asking his question. Here's the bootlegged music store playing a piece of its baseline. Here's the woman at her stall hawking noodles on the spot.

"My friend!boomboomphadthai!want suit?" But the sounds fade in and out, people change and the next minute I get a mix of tee shirt vendor-bar-fabric merchant. "Tee-shiiiiiirt!Youwantbeer?bag?cocktail?"

Once I sort through the noise enough to see what's happening around me, I notice the signs above my head. Mr. Yai's Tattoo Parlour confidently proclaims, Professinally New Needle Every Time Open 11:00am. A banner advertises the local police force: Meet Our Men in Brown, We Know This Town! The one-person drink boards promise cocktails and beer that are Very Strong. One adds, We Don't Check ID.

Then there are the tee-shirts. Bangkok is filled to bursting with them and has designs for everyone. I see the standard shirts for Chang and Singha Beers, the strange but tourist-friendly phrase, Same Same But Different. I see the appeal to backpackers: If Lost and/or Drunk, Please Return to... with an address block below. I see the stick figure bride and groom above the words Game Over. An American who's getting married in Thailand tells me he is going to buy that one.

"I'm going to wear it when I meet my fiancee at the airport," he laughs, "but I figure it gets one use and then goes away."

At night, I go down to the Road for the crowd watching. I can sit in the same place night after night, a collection of plastic stools on the sidewalk called Kim's Cocktails, and never see the same thing twice. Hundreds of people shuffle by in minutes, thousands in an hour. Many have heads that are set to a permanent swivel, eyes that barely blink. It's only the people who have just arrived in town who don't look around; once the bags are gone, they'll look up and see what they missed the first time.

Tonight, there's a tourist, all dreadlocks and grunge, who's peer-pressuring other travellers to drink at Kim's. He's even picked up on the basic advertising tactic: get in front of the intended target, place drink board - Very Strong Cocktails - innocently at their eye level, and just keep talking. The aw shucks grin doesn't hurt either.

The flower sellers are here too, combative little girls who slip in and out of tiny gaps in the crowd. One calls me a loser and sticks out her tongue when I refuse her a thumb war. A loss would cost me 100 baht and she's banking on too many beers in my system. I'm banking on the same. With a poke to my side and a mock pout, she skips off into the noise to challenge someone else, roses towering above her head.

What's next?, I think.

Next is Mr. Thailand, who seals Khao San's fate. He wears cheaply made sunglasses that cover his face and a knee-length jacket that would be zebra-striped except for the butterfly pattern. Normally, he's also on a massive bike, which is covered in advertisements for every business in Bangkok and plays pop music from forty years ago. Tonight, though, he's on foot and gazes at the crowd like any other tourist.

The place is that shocking: even locals can be impressed by it. One does not simply go to see the sights and sounds of Khao San Road. One goes to stare, to gape, to blink and gape again. One goes to see Khao San Road happen. Welcome to the madness.